This blog is dedicated to technologies, solutions and ideas that Make Wi-Fi Smarter. UMA/GAN, the 3GPP standard for providing for secure, scalable access to mobile voice, data and IMS services over IP, is being utilized with Wi-Fi to help operators grow their market positions.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Yesterday the GSMA announced a marketing program to promote and develop ‘always connected’ mobile broadband services in a wide range of consumer products.

While the momentum has been building for some time, the GSMA is looking to highlight the growing trend of HSPA devices (laptops, MIDs,…) which offer consumers a mobile broadband experience.

At UMA Today, our first thought was:Got Voice?

Giving consumers an ‘always connected’ mobile broadband experience is great… especially for VoIP providers like Skype and Vonage.These companies have traditionally been tethered to fixed broadband connections in the home or office.

Now mobile operators are providing them a high speed, low latency, always on mobile broadband network from which to deliver a mobile VoIP service.

While data services are certainly a booming growth area for mobile operators, this service amounts to a ‘dumb pipe’ approach.The fundamental revenue-generating application for the mobile operators, telephony, is conspicuously absent.

It’s clear why.Mobile operators don’t want to invest in a SIP/IMS core simply to provide their own VoIP service.The investment is too great, and the return is minimal.

What operators need is a way to leverage their existing voice service core (MSCs).

This is what UMA technology is all about:extending the mobile operator’s existing services over broadband.

There are several UMA-based softphone mobile clients available today.These products can easily be bundled with an HSPA service.Now when a user connects to the mobile broadband network, they can have the operators own a mobile VoIP application running on the laptop.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Nanoradio is a Swedish-based fabless semiconductor supplier that has developed a unique WLAN chipset which features ultra-low power consumption, the smallest package (their claim) and ‘unique’ support for audio applications.

If you think this would be perfect for a UMA-enabled handset, apparently you’re not alone.

In research released by Informa a couple of months ago and re-introduced this week, Informa estimates that 40% of mobile data usage happens in the home today, growing to 58% of traffic in 2013.It’s much cheaper and easier to offload that traffic onto the user’s own broadband network via Wi-Fi or femtocell than carry it over the macro RAN.

The research also notes that mobile voice usage in the home should rise to 49% of a subscriber’s total minutes in 2013, up from 42% today.Add in the estimated 30% of calls which happen in the office, and a whooping 70% of mobile voice usage happens indoors.

With more than half of all voice and data traffic being generated indoors, Wi-Fi or femto-based Home Zone services should be mandatory from operators in the near future.

Monday, September 22, 2008

First, the company announced it received an order from Softbank in Japan for it’s IMS-based femtocell system. The system does require an IMS infrastructure, which can be troublesome for many existing mobile operators. Softbank’s goal is to be commercial in January 2009.

I believe this is the first commercial announcement/award for 3G femtocells.

Orange continues to innovate on its UMA service.By extending Unik to include 3G, Orange is able to complement its macro 3G network with Wi-Fi indoors.Wi-Fi can offload the macro network, deliver high speed mobile data rates, and overcome 3G coverage/performance issues when the subscriber is in the home or office.

With this announcement, Orange now effectively turns all the LiveBoxes in France into unlicensed femtocells.That’s an installed base of over 4 million units.

I think the quote from Mr. Penalvar, senior executive vice president of strategy, says it best:“…UMA is at the heart of our convergence strategy.”

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

A long awaited (at least from UMA Today’s perspective) Wi-Fi specification was finally ratified by the IEEE last week.The 802.11r specification lets Wi-Fi devices roam quickly between Wi-Fi access points within a network.

Officially known as ‘fast basic service set transition’, the concept behind 802.11r is to enable a device to establish access to and qualifications of a neighbor Wi-Fi access point before transitioning from the current AP.

For a dual-mode handset call, this capability is critical.Because UMA relies on an IPSec tunnel anchored on the handset, the phone must receive the same IP address from the new AP as it currently has from the current AP before it can roam.Without a constant IP address, the IPSec tunnel fails and the call transitions back to the macro RAN (not a tragedy, but a hassle).

The 802.11r spec has been in the works since 2005 and finally crossed the finish line. Look for it in devices and APs shortly.

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About me

I’m Steve Shaw with Kineto Wireless, the key innovator and leading supplier of solutions that enable smart offload for smartphones. Our technologies make Wi-Fi smarter so mobile operators can lower costs and improve performance of mobile services.